The Ethics of Revolt

The Ethics of Revolt

We are opposed both to obedience and to anarchism.

We oppose every form of sociologism—the view that social reality is everything—just as firmly as we oppose selfish and rigid individualism. The only obedience we accept is obedience before a Will that determines all wills in the same manner.

In our view, salvation consists in attaching ourselves, together with history and humanity, to an Absolute within which both history and humanity may find the reasons for their existence. A humanity in full possession of its reason can never regard itself as a being without purpose or destiny. Even if it cannot fully comprehend its purpose, it will act as though that purpose is to be attained through the infinity of successive generations.

As a force of pressure to which the individual is compelled to submit, society shelters tyranny and oppression, thereby creating servitude and a degree of obedience that amounts to slavery. In doing so, it destroys the voluntary powers of the individual. Society, however, should be the exact opposite: an ideal toward which individual action aspires and throws itself—an ideal captive to both compassion and revolt. The effective spread of beliefs throughout humanity is, in truth, the creator of society and civilization. It is this diffusion that makes each of us, according to our strength, a rebel—that is, a moral being. We have sought the salvation of all humanity in the phenomenon of the spread of these beliefs.

Series: Contemporary Turkish Thought

Dimensions: 13.5 × 21 cm

Page Count: 243

ISBN: 978-975-995-549-6

First Published: January 1995

26th Edition: August 2022

Editors: Ezel Erverdi, İsmail Kara